Why Apple Will Never Launch the iPhone 5

If we are to use the internet as a measure of how important certain events in history are, then the iPhone 5 is about 260 times more important than putting a man on the moon.

A quick search on Google spews out more than 6.5 billion search results for 'iPhone 5' and just 25 million for arguably man's greatest ever achievement.

It's funny then, to think that the iPhone 5 doesn't actually exist, yet everyone from amateur bloggers to major newspapers (and yes, us too) feel compelled to write about every little detail, no matter how many times Apple "refuses to comment on unannounced products."

Whether it's grainy (they're always grainy) photos of circuitry that is as likely to be from the iPhone 5 as the tapedeck of a 1982 Ford Fiesta, or some teenager who claims to have 'seen' devices called iPhone 5 visiting his blog of funny cat gifs, the internet is obsessed.

A search for iPhone 4S - which is, you know, the fifth iPhone - brings up around 500 million results, and that must surely include new users asking forums how it works and websites endlessly comparing it to other phones.

Yet, it's the iPhone 5 that leads the way, and here comes a massive spanner to throw in the works - Apple is never going to announce the iPhone 5.

No, and it won't be the iPhone 6 either, because once you start increasing the number each year where does it end? With the iPhone 26?

Apple will call the new iPhone, 'the new iPhone', just like it did with 'the new iPad'.

Sure, there's the tedium of needing a generation number and reference numbers and whatever else to separate new from old, but the actual brand name doesn't have to be anything more than iPhone.

We mentioned the Ford Fiesta for no reason earlier, so let's bring it up again. The Ford Fiesta has always been called the Ford Fiesta.

Yes, there's the Mk1 and Mk2 etc, but that extra bit of information is to bore people in the pub with when 'oh it's a new one' or 'it's from about 2004' will always suffice.

Which iPhone have you got? Oh, the new one. Easy.

The iPhone 5 has been talked about for over a year now and has appeared online so much it has become a bit of a joke, but we writers daren't call it anything else because, as Google proves, everyone is searching for it.

No one cares to ask if that iPod nano you're carrying is the 2, 3 or 4. Instead you say it's the new one, the tall one or the short and fat one - same goes for MacBooks, too.

Chronological numbering should be left for software and pencils, and has no place tacked on the end of product names when we all know the newest model is going to have the fastest processor and the biggest screen anyway.

From now on, Apple will sell a range of iPhones with varying specifications and screen sizes, with the price alone enough to explain which is the newest.